Electric power generation typically involves consumption of fossil fuels, transformation of water flow in hydroelectric generation plants, transformation of geothermal energy, electrochemical processes, or transformation of sunlight. Solar power generation is becoming more and more attractive for environmental reasons. Solar power conversion has thus far largely involved use of semiconductor-based solar cells made from crystalline silicon, gallium arsenide, or other thin film inorganic materials to convert solar radiation to electrical power. Conventional solar cells, however, do not yet have long-term durability sufficient or high efficiency to encourage large-scale commercial adoption as an alternative to fossil fuel-based electric power generation. Benthic unattended generators (BUGS) have been developed, for example, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,913,854 incorporated herein, which provide for persistent power generation to power marine deployed sensors. These devices generate electrical power by oxidizing organic matter (fuel) residing in marine sediment pore water with oxygen (oxidant) in overlying water. Since the BUG device is open to allow replenishment of water, the power generation is generally persistent due to a constant supply of fuel and oxidant through diffusion, tidal pumping, and sediment resuspension, and thus the BUG is ideally suited for powering marine deployed sensors. Such devices, however, are restricted to marine applications, and cannot be connected in series. Consequently, BUG devices must be located in marine environments and require voltage conditioning circuitry to transform the low operating voltage (e.g., 0.35 V) to a useful system voltage (e.g., 3-12 V) to operate conventional electronic devices, thereby preventing non-marine application and reducing the overall efficiency. Microbial solar cells have been proposed for converting biomass to hydrogen for electrode oxidation in fuel cells, and bio-inspired solar power generation has been proposed in which photoactive proteins such as reaction centers of photosynthetic bacteria are extracted from organisms. However, photoactive proteins have finite extracellular lifetimes typically much less than one year, and the light adsorption necessary for photosynthesis is very damaging to the photosynthetic proteins and that photosynthetic microorganism must actively repair them.